Aggressive Response to 4...Nf6 in the Scotch

I have recently been looking into the Scotch Game. I like the 5. Nb3 variation, but have a hard time keeping an aggressive reply to:

I've looked in databases about this move, and it seems that in the next few moves almost all players exchange the d4 knight for the c6 one. This leads to rather drawish play, can you give a line that could keeps things aggressive?

I like that your looking at other stuff, realize though that most players wont play perfectly and you can not always get a flash attack aginast a good player. accept that you will at times, have to play an endgame or a roughly equal position just know the ins and outs better!!

YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE AN AGGRESSIVE OPENING IN ORDER TO PLAY AGGRESSIVELY IN THE GAME

I'm aware that you've been trolling alot for the lulzies and I'm fine with that, but I'm writing this with the assumption that you're this time genuinely interested in attacking chess:

Personally I hate attacking chess, I get this feeling that my sacrafices or my manouvering are always unsound when I do it with the only goal to attack the enemy king. But when I DO attack in chess it's when I believe that it's my strongest resource in the board in the middlegame.

c4 is an extremely positional opening and is something you'd call ''closed drawn boring snoozefest'' while you posted in your thread. In one way you're right (in the exact same way a parham opening can turn into a horrible defense for white, a positional game, an attack, anything)

The reason why I think you may be serious this time is because it's so common to see weaker players obsess over openings as if they matter. ''Oh I play d4 because I hate attacks'' ''I play e4 because I want to actually checkmate the king''

Did karpov not positionally dominate the entire world with e4? Did alekhine not amaze the world of chess with a ton of attacking games in d4?

If you genuinely want to attack and be aggressive develop your pieces with harmony, try to provke a weakness or wait for a mistake from your opponent which you can somehow exploit by gaining time, create threats, sieze the initiative and attack.

Or you can keep trolling and go ''LOLPARHAM NAKAMURA DESUWADESUDESU''. It's up to you.

Anyways, the attack in the first game doesn't look entirely sound, but I guess it is! Nxg5: intuitive or calculation? I think black played great, hmmm. Are you Tal?

The second game is older. So it's the opposite, gained rating. I copypasted all the data and removed everything that would link towards my irl personality.

the attack is more or less sound. not playing h6 in that position is a theoretical trap and it falls to the nxg5 thing, this was the first time I actually played it and I knew no variations. f4 isnt the best but white holds the advantage regardless.

I'm actually quite poor at attacking and tactics. I like closed systems and positional manouvering more.

Anyways, the attack in the first game doesn't look entirely sound, but I guess it is! Nxg5: intuitive or calculation? I think black played great, hmmm. Are you Tal?

The second game is older. So it's the opposite, gained rating. I copypasted all the data and removed everything that would link towards my irl personality.

the attack is more or less sound. not playing h6 in that position is a theoretical trap and it falls to the nxg5 thing, this was the first time I actually played it and I knew no variations. f4 isnt the best but white holds the advantage regardless.

I'm actually quite poor at attacking and tactics. I like closed systems and positional manouvering more.

It only works if they block out the bishop with d6. Black shouldn't be able to play Be7.

From what I know white still has plenty of compensation regardless due to the shaky king, the open lines and the lack of counterplay. regardless it's worth trying in practical play. It's been a long while since I looked at marins book, I only did look at it to see the typical postions for the english opening and see if I liked them (I did!)

Fritz seems to adore whites position though. At first it gives black 0,5 advantage but every time I let it play a few moves white suddenly is 1,5

Gravinator: you seem to be unclear in what you want out of opening. You do realize there is NO opening that going to fit your desire to shut out your opponent's chances. Professional coachs and players have told you what you should be doing NOT what you want to hear.

your goals right now should be on simple opening principles and straight foward lines with out a lot of confusion. can Black obtain a game with 'equal' chances, sure! but equal chances doesnt mean you are going to lose or win. Your bouncing around so much trying to find the holy grail of openings that doesnt exist. Play the scotch! play the line you saw, play the 4 knights scotch, play SOMETHING serious.

I taught the italian game with a fast c3 and d4 to my students. Why? Because I did something really simple. I looked at what professional coaches taught their kids at the world U8-U10 championships. These are people whose livelyhood depends on results. They have winning teams/players or they find a new way to put food on the table. The successful players had a tendency for the italian game as white, dragon and ...e5 as black. Playing systems with simple strategies allows you to focus your calculations and tactical skills with out worring about remembering the right play for more strategically complex closed systems. Look at the great players of before, Morphy, Capablanca, etc all played simple systems that had one main strategical theme they steamrolled people with.

The thing is you gain experience in playing one of these systems. You learn plans and tactics that you can use elsewhere. You will grow and gain in strength once you stop trying to find the perfect system.

1) the database here is very limited in its game selection. My megabase 2011 gives the winning percentage for white as 55.7% for d4 and 57.6% for d3 for white in the Italian/guccio piano and many of these wins are in the lower rated group we play at. In the Ruy lopez is it 55.8% for white...mmmmmm interesting huh

2) the main point and a KEY ONE! is that the reason you see a lower winning ratio is skewed by very strong masters who understand the equalizing plans for black. They learned them by playing them when they were NOT masters, but they still lose to them on occasion. More than one GM has broken out the "simple" position in the guccio piano/italian game recently and won against strong opposition.

3) Players that were vastly stronger than any of us played them and still do. Look at games from the 19th century. Morphy, could give one of us piece odds and have a good chance of winning.

I shake my head when I see players U2000 try to memorize some complex opening system that GM's use against other GM's. The reason those players use those openings is that they have to! Their opposition is stronger and understands the blunt plans and counters them easily (most of the time). The positions require a greater degree of refined skill to pull off: milking small positional errors to force errors or toture someone in with an endgame advantage or even press a complicated attack home.

Play SIMPLE chess! learn one plan! Learn when it works, and when it doesnt work. I teach my students to focus on attacking 3 things, the center, the center, the center. (ok theres other stuff but you get the point) break though the middle and mate or win material. This plan is almost never bad, it might not be the best but not bad. Dont let your opponent hide behind blocked centers, even if its equal. Play The French Exchange with c4, Kasparov did. Play the Botvinnik-Panov attack against the Caro. Play a fast d4! Gain a stong pawn center and push through,... hard! Will it always work?

the plan is to learn how to play open positions first then work back to more closed positions. I am not a genius on this, I am just quoting some dude that said the same thing, that player's games should progress along the same chronological and historical lines as chess did. From the 19th century to more modern play. (that dude was kasparov)

The information is out there and the path for development is already there, you just have a choice to follow it or keep trying to build a better mouse trap.